Ben Christie is a popular YouTuber and farmer.
He has more than 2 million subscribers on his YouTube channel by the name The Urban Rescue Ranch.
Introduction-
Benjamin Christie was born on 12 December 1997 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States and grew up here.
His father works as an ophthalmologist.
Ben’s brother, Andrew studied for a masters in Materials Science & Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.
Interested in animals-
While studying in high school, Ben had decent knowledge about animals.
At a young age, he was an avid fisherman and used to fish in the freshwater.
Also, Ben along with his friends used to catch geese and pigeons downtown and love spending time outdoors.
His other hobbies were rowing (he won a national medal), beekeeping, travelling and javelin throw.
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Education & career-
Initially, Ben attended Baylor University in Waco, Texas to study for Psychology and Neuroscience.
But after his freshman year, he felt that the career paths in this field of study weren’t interesting and rewarding and so, he switched to study Business at Baylor University and majored in sales in 2019.
After doing a couple of internships at Northwestern Mutual and an internship at Owens Corning, Ben secured a sales job at Oracle in March 2020.
Becoming the chicken guy-
As Ben was bored in his senior year at Baylor University and as he had a lot of free time, he decided to start farming.
YouTubers like Coyote Peterson, Steve Erwin and a few farmer YouTubers inspired him to start farming.
Ben purchased four chicks and a few ducklings from the Tractor Supply Company and started farming as a hobby in a backyard near his campus.
Later, as the chicks grew up and started laying eggs, he started selling the eggs on the campus and this earned him the name “the chicken guy” and “the animal guy”.
Becoming a rescuer-
Ben became a rescuer after he rescued a little pigeon that fell off the nest and soon, he became attached to it.
Initially, he learnt about rescuing the pigeon by watching YouTube videos and later, he received mentorship for wildlife rehabilitation.
Soon, people started handing Ben injured or abandoned squirrels, pigeons, feral hog babies, kittens, etc. to take care of and he developed a passion for learning about animals and rescuing them.
He continued taking care of animals even after he started working full-time at his job.
Ben has a rehab license.
Becoming popular on internet-
Initially, Ben was posting videos on TikTok and after the COVID-19 hit, his videos on TikTok started becoming viral.
Due to COVID-19 he started working from home and this gave him an opportunity to film his animals for his YouTube channel.
Ben thought of working on his YouTube channel as he felt that the income from his channel can be used to at least cover the cost of the feed of his rescued animals.
He started his YouTube channel by the name The Urban Rescue Ranch on 3 December 2019 and started publishing animal rescue videos onto it.
Quitting his job to become a full-time YouTuber-
Even while working at his full-time job from home, Ben was taking the time out to take care of his animals and birds which included squirrels, opossums, deer, raccoons, ostriches and a kangaroo.
Even though he was doing well at his job, he felt guilty of stealing the time from his employer to take care of his animals and work on TikTok and YouTube.
Unfortunately, due to the Snowmageddon Texas, Ben didn’t have electricity, and water for three days straight and couldn’t work on his job as his phone and laptop died and this prompted him to quit his job.
He also quit his job because he wasn’t satisfied with it and found it soul-sucking.
Ben quit his job on 18 April 2021 and became a full-time YouTuber.
Later, he sold his house in Austin and bought a three-acre property in Central Texas for his animal rescue operations.
His first viral video-
A day after Ben quit his job, one of his videos became viral on YouTube.
This video is titled- How To Survive A Rhea Attack (training Kevin p1) and was published on 25 March 2021.
Someone posted this video on Reddit and it became viral and as of July 2022, this video has more than 7 million views.
And since then, all of Ben’s videos started getting decent views.
A successful YouTuber-
Now, Ben is a very successful YouTuber.
As of July 2022, he has 1.46M subscribers on his The Urban Rescue Ranch YouTube channel and has 385K followers on Instagram.
Initially Ben was filming and editing all his videos on his iPhone with iMovie and later, he purchased a camera.
Through his videos he has been inspiring many people especially youngsters to start farming and he also educates on sustainable farming and lifestyle.
A nonprofit-
Ben, at his ranch rescues animals and cares for them and later, rehomes them.
He has many animals like possums, pigs, cats, pigeons, chickens, prairie dogs, a kangaroo, ostrich, rheas, ducks, emus, turkey, goats, turtles, etc. and has a small team for helping him out.
The Urban Rescue Ranch is a nonprofit organisation.
Earning sources-
Ben earns through advertisements on his YouTube videos, selling merchandise, and he also accepts donations through his website and Patreon.
He also earns through the offspring of the fancy breeds of animals and he also raises funds through GoFundMe.
Future plans-
In one of the 2021 YouTube videos, Ben stated that his future plan is to move to Indonesia.
He wants to move there because of the cheap cost of living and also because he feels that animals get more mistreated there than in the United States.
So, how are you inspired by the success story of Ben Christie?
Share with me in the comment section below.
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